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Orchid87

Vanilla Quake 2: OpenGL vs Software

Better renderer for the vanilla Quake 2  

25 members have voted

  1. 1. Better renderer for the vanilla Quake 2

    • Software
      10
    • GL
      15


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When playing Quake 2 vanilla what renderer do you prefer? IMO software looks much better.

The biggest advantage is higher texture quality. With OpenGL renderer even on highest texture quality setting the textures are worse than in the software mode. Some later ports, as well as r1gl renderer fix this, but in vanilla Quake 2 this is quite a problem. Here's a comparison between vanilla Quake 2 GL renderer and a hacked new GL one (you get the idea, I'll do relevant software pics later):


(stole that pic from some russian site)

No matter how much you try with different console parameters you never get the highest texture quality in vanilla Q2 GL renderer.

Software renderer also has no colored lighting and IMO it looks more natural than the acid colors of GL renderer. Some textures look really off in GL mode like lava texture which gets weird colors.

Another advantage of software renderer is overbright textures. In Q2 GL mode the lights on the walls look dim like they're not lights at all but just some solid colored square spots. In software mode they are bright like real light are.

I prefer no texture filtering in the older games but since it can be switched off in GL mode via the console I wont consider it.

The only bad thing about software renderer is low quality skies. Also in software mode the sky does not rotate during the Makron battle unlike the GL mode.

inb4 "whoops you're like 15 years late bro". Yep, I am and I've just tried Q2 in software mode recently and played through the game like that for the first time. I've played only in GL mode before and never knew vanilla Q2 could look this crisp.

I'll add comparison screenshots later, kinda lazy now :3

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It doesn't look like the textures are any different. You probably just have the smoothing settings too high.

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Damn I never knew their boobs were so big, probably because I always had to kill them from a distance :)

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I love the metal plates hiding the nipples because "nipples are teh evul". Blood, gore, crude cybernetic implants, smashing dead enemies into bloody piles of putrid debris is fine. But for the love of everything that is good don't let the kids see nipples!

Quake 2 was the first game I played after I got my first accelerated graphics card. I was totally blown away. It was like a whole new game to me, and in a good way. I loved the way it looked, I couldn't believe how much I had been missing and thought it was a massive improvement over the software renderer which, IMO, it instantly made crude, awful and obsolete looking.

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Enjay said:

I love the metal plates hiding the nipples because "nipples are teh evul". Blood, gore, crude cybernetic implants, smashing dead enemies into bloody piles of putrid debris is fine. But for the love of everything that is good don't let the kids see nipples!


Combined with the enormous knockers (despite an overall slim build), it's also hypocritical. "Look! Naked woman with big bOObies! But no nipples because we don't want to make it sexualized, now."

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printz said:

Damn I never knew their boobs were so big, probably because I always had to kill them from a distance :)


The question is: how does she get up after you knock her on her ass with a rocket/Railgun shot? There's no way someone with boobs that big could easily get up from being knocked on her ass.

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They're actually filled with helium. It helps her get back on her feet faster.

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exp(x) said:

I only use software renderers when playing Quake and Quake II.


IIRC there are a handful of effects in Quake 1 that don't render like the should because they used some tricks that only software can render, so playing Quake 1 with the original maps in software mode is the "proper" way to play the levels.

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Same as how there are effects only for hardware rendering, such as coloured lights.

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printz said:

Same as how there are effects only for hardware rendering, such as coloured lights.


But the thing is that Quake 1 was bilt around software mode, so playing it in software is the "true" way to play it, at least if you're playing the official levels.

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Dem texturez
Look at this guy and player weapon:

Software


GL


GL is at the highest texture quality setting and GL_NEAREST mode.

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Haha wow, OpenGL mode with GL_NEAREST mode activated looks slightly better than Software mode, and that's only because of the improved lighting. Now I see why it's enabled by default.

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sgt dopey said:

I prefer GL mode because its the only way for it to work on my computer
(If i do run it in software it gets palette raped)

There's a fix for Windows 7. Anyway, vanilla GL sucks, I hope you use R1GL instead.

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Orchid87 said:

There's a fix for Windows 7. Anyway, vanilla GL sucks, I hope you use R1GL instead.


Do any third-party OpenGL renders make it so that textures on models don't look blurry as hell? That was my only real problem with Quake 2's OpenGL mode.

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Darkman 4 said:

Do any third-party OpenGL renders make it so that textures on models don't look blurry as hell? That was my only real problem with Quake 2's OpenGL mode.

R1GL does exactly that

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That really makes things come into perspective. I always just thought it was th texture filtering being so obtrusive that cause that to happen. But apparently, it's rendering the textures at half the resolution.

I've tried R1GL now, can't get the higher resolutions shown here to show up in Q2.

EDIT: I got it to work, but for some reason I can'ät start SP sessions now. DX

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kristus said:

But apparently, it's rendering the textures at half the resolution.

What a fail.

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printz said:

What a fail.

Not so much a fail as what was required to get the game running well on hardware at the time. Like Jimi posted, you can easily disable it. I assumed that gl_round_down 0 was still rounding down (which would be a fail), but clearly it's not. I didn't remember hardware rendered Quake 2 looking that bad.

For an actual fail, the software renderer will crash trying to render the water ripple effect on a resolution higher than 1024x768. But again, this was the 90's and no one could even play the game with the software renderer cranked up that high.

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Jimi said:

Works fine for me... OpenGL and GL_NEAREST.

http://koti.mbnet.fi/jeejeeje/misc/q2_vanilla_01.jpg
http://koti.mbnet.fi/jeejeeje/misc/q2_vanilla_02.jpg

The thing you're missing is... set gl_round_down "0". By default it's 1 and looks terrible, so set it to 0.

There are no dynamic shadows in vanilla Quake 2, I believe.

Dragonsbrethren said:

Not so much a fail as what was required to get the game running well on hardware at the time. Like Jimi posted, you can easily disable it. I assumed that gl_round_down 0 was still rounding down (which would be a fail), but clearly it's not. I didn't remember hardware rendered Quake 2 looking that bad.

For an actual fail, the software renderer will crash trying to render the water ripple effect on a resolution higher than 1024x768. But again, this was the 90's and no one could even play the game with the software renderer cranked up that high.

That still doesn't rule out that it aged pretty badly, and such (time-dependent) bugginess seems to exist in Heretic 2 and Daikatana as well, making me suspect the Quake 2 engine.

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Jimi said:

The thing you're missing is... set gl_round_down "0". By default it's 1 and looks terrible, so set it to 0.

Yeah it works. But the textures still look a bit sharper and better in Software comparisons. Though that can simply be because of the different lighting models.

printz said:

There are no dynamic shadows in vanilla Quake 2, I believe.

There are a simple version of stencil shadows that look quite nice as long as the floor is flat below the item. They don't Change over complex surfaces though, and if you have the shadow spead over a cavity of some sort, it will still be in the air. So basically, it's stencil shadows that act as a paper cutout. It doesn't appear like the feature was ever truly finished. It's only available through a console command, and it do add a nice touch to the game.

printz said:

That still doesn't rule out that it aged pretty badly, and such (time-dependent) bugginess seems to exist in Heretic 2 and Daikatana as well, making me suspect the Quake 2 engine.

I dunno what you are on about, I think Quake 2 still looks pretty darn good. Especially considering what time it is from. And that Carmack has used ways to get the engine to work better on the systems of the time. Hardly surprising, and since it's something you got the control to change, why is this a fail?

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I'm getting the same error about SP with R1Q2. I have the original Quake 2 .pak files in the correct folder, but it's bitching about there being no SP data. What the fuck.

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What size are the skin textures?

My guess would be something not a power of two but since at the time of the game's release this couldn't work because no hardware supported it, so they probably scaled them down to the nearest size the hardware supported. Of course it looks like crap.

You'll get similar artifacts if you use Doom GL ports on ancient hardware, although all GL ports I know of can support non power of two textures now so on modern hardware it won't show.

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IIRC, they mostly are 320x200. But they aren't exactly using the UV real-estate very economically.

EDIT: Ok I misremembered that. They are 308x184.

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